Doodling boosts concentration

If you want to doodle as you read this, please feel free, although reading and writing at the same time is way beyond my skill level.

First…

Happy Square Root Day! Today’s date on the Gregorian calendar is numerically expressed as 3/3/09. Three is the square root of nine. Only a few of these dates exist every century. For example, the next square root date will be January 4th, 2016 (1/4/16). Just for more number trivia, the most recent all-odd-numbered date was November 19th, 1999 (11/19/1999). We won’t have another all-odd date until the 3000’s.

So, hopefully you’re all still paying attention. Good, because according to new research doodling while listening to a lecture or a boring phone message (as was done in the study) helps people concentrate and remember the information better.

“In the small study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, the doodling group was able to remember an average of 7.5 pieces of information from the message, while the control group could only remember 5.8 on average.”

I know some people who need to listen attentively and not even take notes if they want to fully absorb the information. For myself and what sounds like the majority of people, though, that hand/ear/brain coordination is definitely important in remembering details.

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Beth Kelley is a writer and researcher with an overall interest in how people engage with and are impacted by their environments and vice versa. This has manifested itself in many ways, by looking at creativity, playful spaces and environmental enrichment, sustainability, design research, and integrative and collaborative models of learning such as through play and hands-on learning.
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